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Thursday, 25 December 2008

The Murder of Bernard Hegarty

On 11 August 2004, Tottenham resident, Bernard Hegarty, was attacked in Bethnal Green, east London.

He died in the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, 5 days later.

Bernard was stabbed repeatedly in a 'frenzied' attack after he resisted an armed mugger whilst he was out on his lunch break.

The Evening Standard reported the matter thus:

"A 31-year-old unemployed man has been charged with murder following the fatal stabbing of an architect on his lunch break in the East End. Christopher Olokun, of no fixed abode, was also charged with a street robbery. He was arrested in Stoke Newington last Wednesday by murder squad detectives probing the killing of Bernard Hegarty, 29, in a suspected mugging...

Mr Hegarty, of Tottenham, died without regaining consciousness days after undergoing emergency surgery following the attack."

Olokun was arrested after a home-made knife sheath was found near the attack scene with traces of his DNA on it. At the commencement of his trial in October, 2004he denied murdering and attempting to rob. He also pleaded not guilty to seven other charges of robbery during 2004. John McGuiness, prosecuting, told the court:

"The robber appears to have been after money and Mr Hegarty's mobile. He was clearly a courageous man. That courage has cost him his life because the would-be robber turned into a murderer."

John McGuinness, prosecuting, said that, after his arrest, Olokun found himself in a cell with Glendon Bahadur, a man known to him, who, subsequently, told the police what Olokun had said. McGuiness told the court:

"The defendant said he had been smoking crack and had gone out 'hunting'. He said he had seen a man going to a cash-point. He had asked the man for his phone and wallet but the man would not hand them over."

Olokun told the court that he had been an addict since the age of 16 and was funding his £70-a-day crack and cocaine habit by selling drugs.

Michael Hegarty, Bernard's brother, told BBC News:

"It's a terrible waste of a life... and for what? A mobile phone? Change in your pocket?...

Today's news is tomorrow's chip wrappers, and around and around we go... This will happen again, this will happen by the end of the week. There's going to be someone else stabbed in London, someone else stabbed and killed and there's going to be another family standing here talking to you."

The BBC reporter, Tom Edwards, said:

"The court heard he was responsible for numerous robberies and he had, actually, been arrested and released three weeks prior to murder due to lack of evidence. The judge said Bernard Hegarty's killer lived in a world where addicts killed for drugs."

Det. Insp. Jim Condron told the BBC:

"An evil, evil, vicious man has been taken off the streets... it was a horrendous killing by a vicious person. HE WAS A PERSON THAT, I THINK, WAS BEGINNING TO ENJOY HIS CRIMES."

And this is what MPs such as those below have determined should be the lot of all the past, present and future Bernard Hegarties, all the past, present and future families of the Bernard Hegarties and all the rest of the decent, fair-minded, tolerant British people until all of us are gone.

Why did they do it? They did it because they could. They did it because we were decent, fair-minded and tolerant. And far too trusting.

And they were none of these things.

We gave, they took. And, when we didn't want to give any more, they insisted that we should in the most threatening terms. And, when it looked as though we might rebel and the taking process might be halted in its tracks, they criminalised us and made it illegal to stop giving.

This is what the Blairs, the Browns and Blunketts, the Harmans and the Straws, the Milibands, Hains, Roches, Kaufmans and Cohens have been doing to us for more than fifty years now. And you fell for it, didn't you? You just sat back and hoped for the best when all the best was long gone. And, when the General Election came around, yet again you did what you always did.

And so you got what you always got. More and more and more and more of the same. And you will carry on doing it until the time when there are no more Bernard Hegarties left to kill and no more Michael Hegarties to complain, so eloquently, about it.

Won't you?

This is Bernard Hegarty and the 'evil, vicious' crack addict who killed him: